The communications industry is rapidly changing to adjust to emerging technologies and ever increasing customer demand. This customer demand for new applications and increased performance of existing applications is driving communications network and system providers to employ networks and systems having greater speed and capacity (e.g., greater bandwidth). In trying to achieve these goals, a common approach taken by many communications providers is to use packet switching technology. Note, nothing described or referenced in this document is admitted as prior art to this application unless explicitly so stated.
It is expected for customer Ethernet-based networks at different locations to be interconnected via a Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) using Provider Backbone Bridges (PBBs). The Ethernet Provider Backbone Bridge (PBB) standard provides for layering the Ethernet network into customer and provider domains with complete isolation among their MAC addresses. This standard defines a B-DA and B-SA to indicate the backbone destination and source addresses, and also define B-VID (backbone VLAN ID) and I-SID (Service Instance VLAN ID).